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Serbia Update: 10 Points to Note on the Protests

1. No question that, after 12 days of protests across Serbia, against president-elect Alexander Vucic, the protests are diminishing in numbers, from a high in the tens of thousands last Saturday, in Belgrade, to around 500 yesterday.

2. It’s been clear as the protests pass through the centre of Belgrade every evening, that they enjoy the general goodwill of people who are not participating in them, many taking photos etc, some even joining in…

3. So, why are the protests dimishing? Firstly, take into account Easter. And secondly, take into account growing questions about them, as they go on, namely – who is behind them?

4. Who is behind them? No one knows that. Protests are arranged via various Facebook and Twitter accounts, but they sometimes even conflict each other in information. Meanwhile the protests are not addressed by any politicians, or prominent speakers.

5. On April 10th, the protesters made a list of demands to the government, workshopped via Facebook:

Abolition of the ‘dictatorship’ and the complete removal of the political elite headed by Aleksandar Vucic

Fair and Free Elections – the cleaning up the electoral roll, which is widely believed to contain ineligible and deceased voters; removal of the management of the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media, REM, and of the State Electoral Commission, RIK; equal access by all candidates in elections to the media; imposition of strict penalties on those putting pressure on voters; obligatory TV debates between candidates; transparency over the costs of election campaigns. The protesters also want the regularity of the recent presidential election to be checked and reassessed.

Free Media – removal of the top management of the public broadcaster, RTS, and of the provincial broadcaster RTV; the sanctioning of all editors who breach media laws and the journalists’ code.

De-party-isation – removal of all party-assigned and corrupt officials from state-owned and public companies.

Decentralisation – direct elections for local government and more power to be given to local authorities.

Shift in priorities of economic and social policies

Protection of labour rights and improved status of all workers – changes to labour laws to improve the conditions for workers and uphold their rights; increase in the minimum wage

Protection of living standards – pension and wage cuts to be scrapped; reform of the welfare system; agricultural reform and increases in subsidies for farmers; revision of agreements with the IMF; no further privatization.

Entirely publicly financed educational and health services that are available to everyone

8. The general mood in Serbia is that the protesters do have a point, read more about that here, and they enjoy widespread support, in principle, as a way of sending a message to president-elect Vucic. Yet, as mentioned, doubts about who is behind them, and a campaign against them by state-controlled media, and online, means they have never really reached ‘mass’ status (last Saturday was the largest in Belgrade, and that, estimated around 30,000-50,000, depending on source, a lot, but Belgrade has some 1.5 million).

9. Lack of a viable alternative to Vucic is further undermining the cause. Runner-up in the recent presidential elections was liberal Saša Janković , but there’ve been no Janković banners at the protests, no one’s been calling for him. He received some 16% of the ballot in the presidential election, and while protesters say this was rigged (giving Vucic over 55%), there’s no suggesting that support for Jankovic himself would top 20% in any case. So, if not Vucic, then who, is the question? Protesters don’t seem to know themselves…

10. The first rush of momentum of the protests has gone. Despite it all, for the first 10 days, the protests were on a high. Yet, down to a cluster of protesters now, the wind is truly out of the sails. Easter has no doubt played its part, but the test will be on the 18th, when the protests (officially) re-convene, if there’s enough momentum to push for another ‘big Saturday’, or whether they’ll make it to next weekend.

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4 thoughts on “Serbia Update: 10 Points to Note on the Protests”

Sadly this has been very much as expected from my many years experience of various groups of campaigners. They are consistently grossly incompetent and unrealistic. They never study to learn from previous experience. They assume that “everyone” “knows” what they think is best. New arrivals just learn the same worthless mistakes from the old hands. Anyone trying to teach them marketing science or effective copywriting gets dismissed as arrogant busybodies. There is a widespread delusion that activity equals achievement. There has been an endless succession of these stupidities, such as “Occupy”, the grand “global social forums”, People’s Parliament, wasting a huge amount of participants’ energy. The green party movement is another example. As is Friends of the Earth. The Iraq marches did at least cause the uk parliament to vote against the Syria in 2012(?).
“Make poverty history” – but sadly the words of J Christ 2000 years ago remain correct: “The poor are always with us”.
Even the Labour Party has failed (and morphed into just another globalist-corporatist party).

Another example I forgot to mention is the “Transition Towns” which some were going on about with great enthusiasm but entirely as I expected has now just sunk into the sediment of would-be revolutions which became increasingly irrelevant.